Holocaust Survivors Students Hear Stories Of Horror, Courage...

Each year they come together to talk face to face: those whose lives are still ahead of them and those whose lives were nearly eliminated in the Holocaust.

For two days recently, 500 students from high schools throughout Broward County listened to tales of unspeakable horror and stories of unbelievable courage. And they heard it from the lips of the aging survivors who went through the agony of the Holocaust.

The Student Awareness Day program, ``The Holocaust, Can It Happen To Me?,`` is in its seventh year. Rita Hofrichter, the 64-year-old chairman of the event, is a vice president of the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center Inc. in Miami, which jointly sponsors the event with Broward`s public schools.

``The Holocaust is still the world`s most extreme example of prejudice,`` said Hofrichter, who was a member of the Polish underground in the Warsaw ghetto. ``We have the hindsight to know that what we went through is still going on today. People`s rights are still being abused.``

The lessons are brought to life in several ways: first individual survivors stand up and tell their stories, then the students watch a film. With eight students sitting at a roundtable with two survivors, the students can talk one-on-one with the elderly Holocaust survivors.

Fran Klauber, a Sunrise City Commissioner, is the daughter of concentration camp survivors. Klauber, who helped write the Broward curriculum taught in county schools, said the survivors who talk each year, ``are the last living witnesses. It is one thing to read about this in a book and quite another to hear it from their lips.``

Those who attended agreed.

Adele Santiago, a 15-year old sophomore from Miramar High, said she knew about the Holocaust -- the systematic execution of 6 million European Jews between 1933 and 1945 -- ``but to see it through (their) eyes, it`s a lot more horrifying.``

April Balam, an 18-year-old senior from the Hallandale Adult Center, was left speechless.

``I never knew about this. I don`t know what to say,`` Balam said in a whisper.

And 16-year-old Esther Rosenbaum, a Nova High junior who said she lost most of her family to the Nazi death camps, said: ``It`s important to tell the story.``

Sitting next to her was James Chambers, a Hallandale High teacher, who brought one of his students, Kilder Toussant, a 17-year-old junior with him.

``As black Americans,`` Chambers said, ``it`s important to realize what can be done by one people to another.``

Klauber said the real lesson is that what brought Hitler to power is ``the lack of respect people have for one another. That hasn`t changed.``